Fourth branch, Third World

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I think that Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, like the few other reports I've seen about the Standard and Poors threat to downgrade US debt to Third World status, just misses the point.

Yes, insane Republican ideology and The Conceder In Chief have done a swell job creating an existential economic threat by tying approval of the debt ceiling to the politics of government spending and taxation. This is the "Worst. Congress. Ever." Blah blah blah.

In journalism lingo, there's a "buried lede" in Klein's piece:

And having upset S&P, appeasing them might not be so simple. Beers repeatedly emphasized that he wasn’t just looking for a number. He was looking for something “credible.” And credible, in his view, was something that both parties had embraced. After all, he argued, deficit-reduction plans have to be continuously implemented over a decade or more, and if there’s not “buy-in from both parties,” there’s no reason to believe that the plan will survive the inevitable changes in political control.

On the one hand, the S&P view is a reasonable analysis. But on the other, sinister hand:

You might ask whether all this matters. S&P got the financial crisis almost entirely wrong — in fact, their analytical errors, alongside those of other agencies, substantially contributed to it — so why should we listen to them now?

But the question isn’t whether S&P should be listened to. It’s whether the market will listen to them.

Yes, that's right. The once-respectable financial rating agency, which is as tarnished by the 2008 economic implosion as any Wall Street investment bank, has made federal legislative politics an evaluative criterion for assessing the full faith and credit of the US government and the debt it issues.

And as a small digression, it's probably worth inserting here that there really is no deficit crisis. The deficit is high-ish in relation to conventional yardsticks, but interest rates are so low (near zero as applicable to government borrowing, in fact), that there is no problem servicing this debt... unless the ceiling isn't raised promptly. The "deficit crisis" is an invention of right-wing politicians, corporate media, and as a johnny-come-lately, President North Star.

But back to the libretto: There is nothing benign whatsoever about what S&P is up to here. They aren't trying to serve as a voice of reason: they're emphatically inserting itself into the political fray with the power of a fourth branch of government, but one outside of federal checks and balances. "You motherfuckers attend to the 'deficit crisis' ," S&P seems to be saying, "or else we'll sic The Market on you." With "you," of course, meaning both politicians and voters. It is an aggressive, unconscionable lobbying assault on behalf of The Corporation---a protection racket that the federal government must now subscribe to with an initial payment of $4 trillion extracted from middle-class taxpayers, the poor, and the elderly. If they pull this off, there will be no end to the racket until we're all living in sheet metal shacks on dirt lots.

The S&P threat gives every politician in Washington enough cover, or terror, to cave in to the demands of the Republican legislative caucus and The Conceder in Chief for "the good of the nation." Once this smelly, syphilitic Wall Street camel has its nose all the way into the tent, S&P might conceivably become as powerful as the Federal Reserve in dictating the grim economic future of America. No accountability; just the perpetual threat to shit everybody else's nest if some warty bankers and corporate chieftains don't like the drift of public policy.

Irony, presumably unintended

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Herein please find a special educational supplement concerning proper use of the term "irony," intended for Big Rock Head specifically and the greater Fifty50 community generally, courtesy of the Iowa "Tea Party" via TPM. You see, BRH, the irony of the scene depicted below is that President Obama is in fact a moderate, centrist U.S. President while mainstream Republican Senate "leaders" such as John Kyl, Mitch McConnell, Judd Gregg, John Cornyn, and Tom Coburn are right-wing radicals who thrive on the bitterness of fearful, naive "Real Americans" who they trick into believing that the unemployed and chronically impoverished people just have it too darned easy in life while our wealthy elites need even more tax relief than George Bush gave them 9 years ago.

A casual reading of any impartial 20th century history text will reveal that both Hitler and Stalin derived unheard-of totalitarian powers in part by aligning corporate management and strategic objectives (and financial interests) with those of their respective party apparatus. The differences in tactics of Hitler and Stalin were essentially irrelevant considering the enormity of the results they achieved, such as continual wars of aggression and industrial-scale mass murder. Can any of my shorties out there in Fifty50Land think of any examples from our modern times that resemble the Nazi and Communist merger of corporate, political, and military interests to prey on the fearful and naive? Do tell.

Editor's note: the photo above is by Deb Nicklay and copyrighted by the Associated Press and the Globe Gazette (http://gazetteonline.com/) in Iowa, U.S.A. Fair use is claimed for purposes of social commentary and community education. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

"Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution" [updated]

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As seen on Atrios: I assume that "Newsmax" is some kind of influential far-right nuthouse organ. But in these times, the drool of self-marginalized lunatics bubbles in chunks from underneath the toilet seat cover and into our public commons too fucking often for my taste. To paraphrase one of the commenters in the linked piece on Media Matters: Judas Fucking Priest --- these people lost one single election, not even a year ago, and they're already halfway down the path toward advocating violent revolution. Wingnuts just need to get a grip on things, because they still control the Senate with the help of Democrat Copperheads, and the media are choked with projectile vomit from the neckholes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and the rest. Meanwhile, genteel corporate media celebrity pundits are afraid to acknowledge the existence of this puke fountain, let alone suggest that it's an odious and disturbing nuisance.

Anyway, someone needs to let this John Perry guy know that coups actually are not permitted by the U.S. Constitution, whether by "patriotic general and flag officers" or racist asshole bloggers. But, then, maybe the Congress will decide to repeal all federal laws that prohibit insurrections (Article 8), and John Perry can then enjoy his "bloodless coup." John Perry claims that "[d]escribing what may be afoot is not to advocate it." Well, yes it is actually, John Perry. And if you have foreknowledge that a treasonous conspiracy by patriotic military men "may be afoot," I hope that some Secret Service agent won't have to beat it out of you too hard... especially not the 7 foot bald one with a gold grille and prison tats.

Update: I'm sure we all can look forward to indignant editorials festooning the op/ed pages across the land, plus salvos of sharply worded criticism by national TV news treasures like George S. and Chris Matthews, in response to the astonishing revelation that Newsmax is sponsored by the Republican National Committee. It Can't Happen Here Dunt Duhduh Dunnnnn! Yawn....

I, for one, know what could go wrong

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Mark Frauenfelder on BoingBoing asks the eternal question:

What could be wrong with taking an insane killer to the country fair?

To me, this is a self-answering question: he would return to his secure, undisclosed location and continue planning the follow-up to his secure, undisclosed activities on 11 September 2001.

But he wears a flag pin!

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In observance of Flag Day I present to you Richard Bruce Cheney: Patriot.

Freedom was on the march

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But then Iran had its very own Brooks Brothers Riot. Before the weekend is over I'll be we're hearing from Republican elder statesmen how Obama "lost Iran."

Potentially scary situation [updated]

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I have fears that these Palin/McCain experiments with inciting mobs to violence could be the prelude to something unspeakably ugly. Consider what might happen if, in the next 2 weeks or so, that dark-skinned thugs appeared at Republican rallies and started scuffling with GOP nutbags in order to "defend" Obama. Those thugs would certainly be what the French call "agents provocateurs", and they would somehow, indirectly as hell, be on the payroll of some very, very bad people who have a very keen interest in making sure that Obama never sets foot in the White House.

It would create a public atmosphere ripe for backlash against Obama, not to mention much more sordid or violent potential impacts. The corporate media would be the enablers. I'm not saying it would even work. But think about how heinously effective such an idea could seem to desperate, criminal white men.

Update: in acknowledgment of anon in my comments section, here's a shot of actual paranoia ripped from the comments section of this Politico post:

Between 8:45 PM and 9:15 PM tonight (Oct 8) on Intrade, someone just bet a LOT of money against Obama winning the presidency. And I mean a LOT. His stock, which has been over 70 for a couple of days now and at 76 most of the time today dipped down to 64 or so in those 20 minutes under heavy betting before recovering immediately after 9:15 to 73... Very strange.. is there something someone knows?? What is the news tomorrow, JMart?" Posted By: intrade | October 08, 2008 at 11:54 PM

If you need me tomorrow, I'll be in the bunker with my 50 bottles of wine.

Things I did not know about England

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Dan Solomon, an expatriate American blogger living in the U.K., offers us this fascinating report about the ubiquity and characteristics of propaganda posters in England. Most of his examples read like something from the backgrounds in "V", but I found the poster reproduced at upper left to be especially... something or other. Click through and check it out; Dan notifies us that there is at least one "western democracy," as we still call them, that is even better than our very own Republicans at fearmongering to promote social control. The general message of British propaganda seems to be: We see what you're doing. Aren't you ashamed of yourself?

Warrantless wiretapping thought experiment

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It's audience participation time! You are invited to help with my domestic wiretapping thought experiment! Let's get started!

Suppose you are the U.S. Attorney General, in charge of a Justice Department that believes it has the power to conduct warrantless wiretaps of any telephone conversation that takes place in the United States. Suppose further that your department has in the past investigated and prosecuted domestic political enemies for the sole purpose of removing them from elected office. Also suppose that you had spent the previous 20 years as an ultraconservative judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and may or may not harbor feelings of animosity about a flashy, arrogant liberal prosecutor (now the Governor of your state) who in the recent past caused considerable trouble for some of the nice men who toil on Wall Street.

Given those assumptions (here comes the audience participation part), could you think of any reason not to allow the G-men to prosecute Eliot Spitzer on the basis of evidence that may have originated with an illegal wiretap? As a corollary experiment, can you think of any reason why Pat Fitzgerald's investigation of Karl Rove may have gone suddenly, inexplicably limp a coupla years ago?

All this is just the basis for a "hypothetical," of course, not a "conspiracy theory."

Update: Well, dagnab it, Jane Hamsher beat me to the punch with this nice post at FireDogLake that includes other, more wonky, Spitzer-type hypothetical questions for you to ponder. I hope our heroes at TPM Muckraker dig into it.

Beyond "Good to Great"

From The Salt Lake Tribune, via TPM and reader DB (where I saw the relevant Trib excerpt), comes an account of a next-gen employee motivation program.

In the long term, employee motivation through management-initiated waterboarding is probably a welcome development for several reasons. First, it will weed all the sissies out of the sales team and put them on the streets where they really belong to begin with. Second, it will finally rid us of impermanent, namby-pamby management fad thinking epitomized by Harlequin-style boardroom romances such as Good to Great. Third, it will help to rip the grinning, baboon-like happy-mask off the Reagan Revolution and reveal just what it's always been about: applying wealth and brute force to deceive the innocent, intimidate the weak, and redefine human beings as an expendable capital resource for use by a handful of degenerate plutocrats and their enforcers.

Dodd's an Obamaniac

This morning I received an email from Senator Chris Dodd informing me that he is endorsing Barack Obama for President. What's that? You haven't received your email from a U.S. Senator today? You must be a bad citizen!

I hope that Senator Dodd has extracted a promise from Obama to support all of his (Dodd's) efforts in the Senate to avoid further erosion of the Bill of Rights, and to withdraw the carte blanche for domestic surveillance that the Congress has "granted" the Executive Branch in recent years. (I put scare quotes around granted because the Congress has no more authority to "grant" the Executive Branch permission to ignore the Constitution than the Judicial Branch has to "grant" the presidency to its favorite candidate before all the votes have been counted. But, whatever.)

Anyway, Senator Dodd urges me to become involved in Obama's campaign. We'll see.

Why criminals need immunity from prosecution

The U.S. Director of National Intelligence, one Mike McConnell, believes that telecoms need blanket retroactive immunity for breaking federal eavesdropping laws because "[t]he issue is liability protection for the private sector. We can't do this mission without their help."

That's correct: our right-wing U.S. government, despite controlling all three branches of the federal government (including Republican-loving Democrats in both houses of Congress), cannot successfully implement a permanent police state without the "help" of the private sector.

Interesting. I wonder how these people would like it if our "unitary executive" (i.e., Fuehrer*) is a brown man or wears control-top panty hose. Maybe Final Call will get to "eavesdrop" on Dick Cheney's business dealings, or Bust can perform a warrantless investigation on the office wives of George Bush.
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* Fuehrer is German for "Leader." What did you think it means?

Bear with me

As seen through a link on Eschaton. But he doesn't need the traffic, so thanks to me you can just click through to the original source.

Unintended consequences

The overthrow of democratic constitutional governments is, unfortunately, a mature line of business in this world. The most effective method for subverting an established democracy would seem to involve the synergy of lawyers, guns, and money. That style of coup, according to my everyday sense of things, works fastest and best in nations with only a short history of popular sovereignty or a weak tradition of same.

Lots of citizens are gloomy about the prospects of U.S. constitutional democracy, especially about America's apparent down-slope race toward something that smells like fascism (complete with state-controlled media). But even if you start from the debatable premise that most Americans live for consumerism and obsess on phony political issues that prey on their psychological insecurities, the U.S. is nevertheless far different from China or the Wiemar Republic or pre-Rat-Pack Cuba. No one has ever tried such a grand experiment in totalitarianism in a laboratory with 210 years of practice in constitutional democracy. It's fun to wonder what some of the unintended consequences of that experiment might be.

Update: I just remembered that, during Thanksgiving dinner, Nana opined that she hoped certain public figures got the "Mussolini treatment." Now wouldn't that be an unintended consequence? Blondy thought it was just hilarious.